The Paris Seamstress

by Natasha Lester

  “So I know that, when she asked me to take on her business, it was because she thought I could do it. I can’t let any of this go. What, then, was Estella’s life for? Why else was she brave enough to move countries, to make the kind of clothes women had needed for so long but had never been able to find? Her legacy should not stop here. And I don’t intend to let it.”

  She had more to say, but the uproar of applause that followed her words meant that she would need to say it another time. And she finally and truly understood that everyone at Stella Designs had, like her grandmother, been waiting for Fabienne.

  It was a thought that both thrilled and terrified her. She had two months until the spring/summer collection had to be launched to prove that she was worthy of their trust.

  Over coffee the next morning, sitting in the front room at Gramercy Park, looking out over the lushness of the park, Fabienne read about herself in the New York Times: “Fashion Matriarch’s Granddaughter to Take Over Stella Designs.”

  Fabienne smiled. How Estella would have rebelled at being called a matriarch. Like dowager, it was a word Estella had always felt did not apply to her.

  Fabienne’s phone rang and she answered it with a huge smile. “Hi!”

  “Seems like you made quite an impression yesterday,” Will said, lightly enough, but she could tell that he wasn’t himself.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “I was going to call you this morning to let you know I was here. It was a bit of a last-minute decision to come. Do you want to grab some lunch?”

  “Lunch would be just the kind of mundane thing I would love to do right now,” he said wistfully. “But Liss is…not expected to last the week. I keep going to call you and then I don’t know what to say…” He stopped, but not before Fabienne heard the sound of his heart breaking in his words.

  “Will…”

  Neither spoke and Fabienne knew it was because he couldn’t, and nor could she. She also knew why he’d telephoned, rather than used FaceTime. He hadn’t thought he’d be able to hold it together.

  “Can I visit her?” she asked.

  “She’d love to see you. But she might seem confused. She’s not eating. She can’t get out of bed. Her hands…Her hands are blue. She looks…”

  “Melissa always looks beautiful,” Fabienne said firmly. “I’ll come tonight after work. I have something for her. Is she at home?”

  “Yes. Home is the best place for her now.”

  “Will?”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you.”

  She heard a sharp and sad intake of breath as he hung up the phone.

  That day at work, Fabienne outlined more of her plan. The line, while still strong, had drifted a little from its origins over the past couple of years since Estella had been too frail to spend any time in the office, leaving much of the work to designers who had certainly tried their best, but who also wanted to make their own mark. Fabienne wanted only to strengthen her grandmother’s mark.

  She spent the day in the archive, looking through sketches, finding ones from the very first showing Estella had ever done in the Gramercy Park house, a showing Fabienne hadn’t ever known about. She now understood, as she read over a short piece from Women’s Wear Daily, that this showing was what Estella had been referring to when she’d told Fabienne she’d once made a mistake and that it had been her biggest learning experience.

  In the archive were a couple of photographs and a clipping from Vogue with a picture of Estella looking so young and so beautiful that Fabienne shook her head. How was it possible for Estella to really be dead, she wondered anew. Another photograph showed a group of people: Janie—gorgeous Janie who’d taught Fabienne to carry herself with grace—and Sam, her kind and loving grandfather.

  Grandfather. Her mind recalled the birth certificate which named two strangers as her grandparents, and the marriage certificate which seemed to confirm that her father couldn’t have been Sam and Estella’s child. Fabienne closed her eyes as if she could draw the curtains over those hurtful thoughts.

  When she reopened them, her eyes fell onto a line of text in the Vogue article: “The first showing of Stella Designs at Lena Thaw’s home in Gramercy Park.” Fabienne drew the page closer. Was she so tired from the flight and from throwing herself straight into work that she was hallucinating? The page was a facsimile, a poor quality copy but, even so, the words Lena Thaw were distinct enough, as was the wall in the background with the Frida Kahlo picture above the fireplace. It was definitely Estella’s house. So why did the article say the house was owned by Lena Thaw, the same woman whose name was on her father’s birth certificate?

  Fabienne pushed everything back into the folder and took out her phone. She typed in Lena Thaw, just as she’d done months before, and again the meaningless search results came back. Then she opened up the New York Public Library’s website and clicked through to the digital image collection. This time, when she typed in the name Lena Thaw, she found two pictures. Both looked to have been taken at parties. Both showed a woman who was Estella, except the caption called her another name entirely. The second of the two pictures, from the social pages of the New York Times, showed Lena/Estella in July 1940 dancing with a man. The caption read: “Lena Thaw and Alex Montrose.”

  So they were real, these people who, until now, had just been names.

  The only thing to do after such an unsettling discovery was to work. Her mind was too jumpy to focus on Stella Designs so she took out the dress she’d started to make for Melissa, opened her grandmother’s beautiful old sewing box and sat down at the sewing machine, the very one Estella had brought with her from Paris in 1940. It had always stood on its own special desk in Estella’s office and it still worked as well as ever. For the next two hours, Fabienne did nothing besides cut and sew. She too needed to work on her cutting skills but she felt certain she could do a good enough job on this piece.

  When it was done, she smiled. It was good. And it had helped her to forget. She put the dress aside and threw herself into drawing, using the sketches from Estella’s very first showing as her inspiration. At six o’clock, satisfied that she had the start of a collection before her, she picked up Melissa’s dress and caught a taxi to the Upper West Side.

  Will answered the door looking even worse than she’d expected. He hadn’t shaved for days and the skin below his eyes was stained dark with fatigue. He wore a crumpled white T-shirt, jeans, and bare feet.

  “Come here,” he said, holding out his arms.

  She stepped into them gladly, felt him take a shaky breath and knew he was fighting to control his emotions. “I missed you,” she whispered into his shoulder.

  “I missed you too,” he said feelingly and they stood for a long moment, holding one another.

  Eventually, he let her go. “I know the last time I saw you I promised the same city, no taxis, and no sadness,” he said. “But I’m already breaking my promise.”

  “Two out of three is better than zero,” she said. “Let’s go see Melissa.”

  He led her through to Melissa’s room and, even though Fabienne had willed herself not to react, it was almost impossible. Melissa was shrunken, thin, her body so slack it was as if her soul had already escaped and all that was left were the physical remains. Fabienne saw Melissa’s hands resting on top of the covers, saw the telltale blue of circulation shutting down and she knew from her mother’s work that death wasn’t far away.

  Melissa’s eyes flickered open. It took her a long moment to rouse enough to comprehend where she was and who was in the room and Fabienne’s chest compressed as she saw the realization flood Melissa’s eyes—as it must every time she awoke—that she was, as yet, still alive.

  Fabienne kissed Melissa’s cheeks, enveloped her in a hug. “I brought you something,” she said, furiously staring at a spot on the wall over Melissa’s shoulder so that her eyes would not cry. “You said you were bored of nightgowns so…” Fabienne passed Melissa a wrapped present.

  “Wh
at is it?” Melissa asked, sounding as ebullient as she always had.

  “Take a look,” Fabienne said as Will sat down on the other side of the bed, eyes on his sister, expression so wretched that Fabienne wanted to lay his head in her lap, to stroke his hair until he fell asleep, to comfort him even though she knew he was beyond comfort.

  Melissa’s fingers struggled with the bow, eventually working it off so that the paper fell away to reveal a gold dress. Not just any gold dress. An exact replica of the one they’d been standing in front of at the Met the evening they’d first met. The dress Melissa had said was fabulous.

  “It’s probably not as good as the original,” Fabienne admitted. “I’m rustier than I’d thought. Even so, I think it’ll be almost splendid enough for you.”

  “Are you kidding?” Melissa’s voice was thin. “It’s much too splendid for me.”

  Fabienne blinked hard. “I’ll help you put it on.”

  “Turn around,” Melissa commanded Will.

  He did as he was told and Fabienne lifted Melissa’s little body toward her, helped her take off her nightgown, and drew the gold dress over her head. Then she took a brush out of her bag, redid Melissa’s hair, propped the pillows, leaned her back against them and dabbed some gloss on her lips. “Perfect,” Fabienne said, smiling. “Don’t you think?”

  Will turned to face his sister and the look on his face made Fabienne’s throat ache and her heart crack just a little more. Oh God, she was going to cry, even after all the promises she’d made. But it was okay because Melissa was the first to break, a tear sliding down her cheek. Then Will, holding the tears in his eyes but they shone with a telltale brightness, and then Fabienne too as Melissa held out her arms and gathered them both to her and nobody moved for such a long time, holding on in an embrace that Fabienne would remember all of her life.

  After an hour or so, Melissa fell back asleep. Fabienne and Will watched her for a few minutes, then Will said, “Fabienne, I’m not going to be much use for a while. I feel like I’ve strung you along—you could be out with someone right now, not sitting here.”

  “You heard Jasper that night, didn’t you?” Fabienne asked and Will nodded.

  “Jasper’s my ex,” she said. “In fact, he’s the reason I’m in New York. He reminded me what I used to love. Not him,” she said gently, “but fashion design. Sketching. Drawing. I have a collection to launch in less than three months’ time. So I’m here because I want to be; I have work to do. But I’m also here for you and for Melissa, and I don’t expect anything from you. Not until you’re ready. I’m happy to wait.”

  “Really?” he asked, eyes shining again and Fabienne couldn’t sit on the other side of the bed any longer. She moved across and slid her arm around him.

  “Really,” she said. “Take as long as you need.”

  “I’m terrified I’m going to mess this up,” Will admitted. “That all we have is bad timing and I’m going to look back on this in a few months and know it was the kind of love I should have done anything to hold on to.”

  “It is that kind of love,” Fabienne said. “And that kind of love can wait for as long as it needs to.”

  She reached out to wipe away the tears that sat in the hollows below his eyes. Then she kissed him gently on the lips. He responded with a kiss so soft and tender that it hurt and she felt the most staggering, sweeping sensation rush over her and her grandmother’s words—loving can hurt—rang in her ears. It did hurt, loving Will. It hurt so much she almost couldn’t stand it. Because he was in pain beyond anything and bearing witness to that was almost worse than feeling her own pain at Estella’s death.

  She swiped at her own cheeks. “Before I end up a blubbering mess,” she said, “I should go. I’ll come every night just to sit with her. Just to see how you are.”

  “I love you, Fabienne,” he said.

  “I know,” she whispered before she left. “I know.”

  In the taxi on the way back to Gramercy Park her mind whirled. Melissa was dying. She and Will wouldn’t be together, not properly, for a long time. Not until the grief had diminished somewhat. She had a collection to throw her thoughts and energies into. And she had a mystery to solve. A box of secrets to reopen. Yes, Mamie, she thought. Loving can hurt. It hurts so much that you aren’t really mine. But who do I belong to? Who did my father belong to? Maybe she should find out. Perhaps her love for her grandmother could stretch to taking in the secrets Estella obviously wanted her to know.

  Part Nine

  Estella

  Chapter Thirty

  December 1941

  The week of doing nothing besides talking and loving and kissing passed too quickly until one glorious late morning, when the sun shone like springtime and Estella was lying on one of the bamboo sun loungers that sat on the river side of the house on the wide verandah. She was alternating between sketching and gazing out at the view, so beautiful on a winter’s morning, sun gilding the water, the sky, the trees. The cypress trees, backdropped by the river, were like ballgowns, the intricate ruffled effect of the leaves like exquisite lace adorning the silk of the water.

  She felt Alex come up beside her, irresistibly handsome in bare feet, rolled chinos, a white shirt with sleeves pushed up and the top button undone, felt him watching her for a few minutes and then he leaned over to kiss her so deeply that she didn’t hear the sound of a car pull up in the driveway, nor footsteps clatter across the verandah.

  “You two look like honeymooners.” Janie’s voice made them jump. There she stood, hands on her hips, grinning. Sam gave Estella a wave and Alex a look that Estella couldn’t quite interpret but it seemed reserved rather than friendly. When Estella had telephoned them and invited them to come, she hadn’t really explained about her and Alex. She knew it would be obvious the moment Sam and Janie arrived, and it was.

  She hurried over to embrace them both, kissing Janie’s cheek, so relieved that Janie had come—she hadn’t been able to promise anything when they’d spoken on the phone but Nate was away on business so she’d hoped she could swing it. She kissed Sam’s cheek too, knowing that Alex was watching her and she smiled back at him reassuringly to remind him that she’d chosen him, was not interested in Sam, that there was no need to worry. Estella understood it wasn’t jealousy; that because of Alex’s past, he believed he didn’t deserve her and that she would leave him one day because of it. But she would never do that. He smiled back at her as if he was starting to believe it.

  Alex organized lunch on the verandah, dragging out coats and lighting a fire to keep them warm, and they sat in the sunshine and drank champagne. Estella relaxed as Alex drew Janie out, had her talk about Australia, what she missed and what she didn’t. She watched Sam slowly warm to Alex as Alex showed him the library and a collection of books on modernist art which Sam pored over, eventually returning and saying, “You know, at this rate, we might never leave.”

  Janie collapsed dramatically into a bamboo lounge, glass of champagne in hand. “Damn right.”

  Estella walked past Alex, brushed his hand with her fingertips and whispered, “Thank you.” She saw his eyes darken and knew what he was thinking, but she also knew it would have to wait until their guests retired.

  And so the afternoon passed in a kind of charged and expectant manner, both of them enjoying the company of Sam and Janie but both of them making any excuse to sit next to one another, to make some sort of bodily contact, whether it was leg pressed to leg, or brushing a piece of hair away from a cheek, or their fingers touching as they passed a glass or a dish, not needing to speak because they knew exactly what the other was thinking.

  After evening had fallen and they’d agreed that the work would start tomorrow, that Alex had meetings to go to, that Estella and Sam and Janie would take over the sunny sitting room on the ground floor, Estella sank onto the sofa beside Alex, tucking her legs up, resting her head on his shoulder, feeling his hand drop down to stroke her hair languorously, with promise, and she couldn’t look at h
im because seeing what was in his eyes would be too much.

  “How’s Nate?” she asked Janie, a subject Janie had studiously avoided.

  Janie was more than a little drunk so she answered the question with what sounded like truth. “It was his birthday last week; I wanted to get him a surprise. I went to Bloomingdale’s and stood in the store for an hour, but there were too many things. Then I went to the bookstore because he likes to read—I’d studied his bookshelves to understand his tastes but I couldn’t see a pattern and I didn’t know what he’d already read. So I asked the clerk for a recommendation and he sold me a book. When I gave it to Nate, he said it was fine but I haven’t seen him read it yet. I was at a luncheon earlier in the week and I asked one of the women how long it takes to really know your husband and she laughed and said that sometimes it was best not to know.”

  Estella dared to look at Alex and he glanced down at her and she knew he thought the same as her: it wasn’t marriage that made a person knowable.

  And Janie must have picked up something of what passed between them because she said, “I thought love was all about finding someone who’d give you a ring and say those three words but now I can see that I don’t have any idea what love is.”

  “Janie,” Estella said, hurrying over to her friend.

  Janie stood up. “I’m drunk and going to bed.” She disappeared inside.

  “Is she all right?” Estella asked Sam.